108: Staffing Specialist Chris Bousquet | 3 Steps to Hiring Better Quality Restaurant Employees.

You know, it's seeing and greatly appreciated you know, in the industry.

Wow. The company teaches you more about consistency, quality attention to detail and standards then. Then I can imagine ever learning anywhere else, and there's other companies doing amazing work. Sure. They do a great job of laying below the radar. So, you know, they been in business almost 50 years and have almost 50 locations. But you know, they make you feel like most locations are your own kind of neighborhood restaurant when you go there. Mm-hmm.

. And I just learned so much about myself and grew so much, you know, over the course of the 10 years, really learned how to be an operator. And the funny thing is, is that one thing that Houstons doesn't teach you is how to not work at Houstons. So when you first leave , you know, I remember I went elsewhere to an amazing, huge company in New York.

And we'll get into it in a minute, but I don't want to make it sound like this is disparaging, but you know, I remember the first p l was like six weeks late and, and facilities were not as tight. and it's just, you know, and then you kind of see that's more of the real world. You know, I was in like a Fantasyland I was in Disneyland of restaurants. And then, and this is more of the real world, real people and real problems and real. Real issues.

So you know, that was kind of a learning curve for me. And I, I'll be honest, I came in real, really too hot and you know, a little bit on fire because, you know, Houston teaches you to drop you into all these different cities as if you own the place. So walking, I'm like that. What are you doing? Like, this is a mess. This is wrong. That light bulbs out. Like, come on, let's get it together. And I, you know I didn't get buy-in, I didn. Didn't get to know anybody.

I didn't get them to let them know me, and it had a real adverse effect and it took a little while to come out of. Luckily you know, I lead by example, so I'm like, Hey, this, this needs to be painted, and then I grab a paint brush. So I think they, you know, they saw a little bit that I wasn't just being a jerk about it. But you know, I really learned from that experience. Anyway, to answer your question more thorough directly. I worked at at Houston's.

Then after that I worked for a company called BR Guest in Manhattan. At that point was already you know, Steve Hanson had sold the company, but also a great experience. I thought I was gonna retire from hospitality. I went to work for Apple at the world's flagship location in Manhattan for a couple years. And, you know, that was another level. So that taught me so much about teamwork and development, you know, in a busy restaurant.

A manager who doesn't delegate, you know, they shouldn't do everything, but they kind of, they, they kind of can, you know, they shouldn't, but they can. In a store like that, with, that's 24 hours of 800 employees doing 600 million in sales, you actually cannot. So, you know, I learned to depend on other people and develop, and I always thought if I could have brought some of those skills back to hospitality, how much, even more successful I would've been. So that's exactly what I did.

I left after about two years, and then I went to work for Starbucks, opened their flagship location in Manhattan, one of six worldwide Roastary location. And really never look back ultimately getting out of operations and opening a recruiting firm.

You know, as much as I enjoyed working in operations, even at the great locations, I, I was telling you about, you know, you meet and you work with 50 people, a hundred people, and there was a great experience now as a coach and as a recruiter, that gets exponential because now I work with operators and they have their own 50 and a hundred people. So now, you know, the dozens become hundreds, the hundreds become thousands, and I really think that's how you kind of grow and, and create a legacy.

And, and I'm, I'm have the absolute pleasure of helping more people now than I ever have been able to before.

And, and I almost get roped back in like nearly daily, if not weekly. And you know, if there were more hours in the day or I could figure out how to not sleep, I think that I would, I think I would.

Portions and I know that wanna be respectful of everybody's time cuz we only have 30 minutes. But you know, you were, you brought up the point that, you know, most recruiters are not necessarily career coaches as well. Some recruiters are just, you know, focused on their job. But once you ask Chris about kind of what we were talking about and. You know, best to make use of those type of services, I guess. Sure. Well,

But the other side of it that I thought was really interesting was the career coaching and, and stuff that you do and helping people position themselves properly in order. Be successful. And there's, I mean, maybe you can tell the story better than I can, cuz I'd probably butcher it.

But there was one example you were telling me and I think our first conversation about how you just went to the restaurant just to help and, you know, nobody was paying you or anything, you just went to like, help the operation, help mentor some people, help, you know, that kind of thing. And so can you tell us a little bit about your, your sort of stance on coaching and how you help the industry just kind of move forward and the people that.

. So if I can, you know, if I see a dozen resumes a day, it's an absolute pleasure to help somebody extract the information that they know that they know, but maybe they don't know how to present it either on their resume. So that's the first step. So, you know, I help people by really highlighting some of their achievements and accomplishments over the course of their career.

Next, I think it's important to practice the interview process because again, you know, 30 minutes, 60 minutes of somebody's time that you get in this day and age, probably over an experience like this. So possibly not face to face, and it's easy to either, you know, get nervous or not really comprehend. Questions should be answered. Mm-hmm. . So I think if we can practice that a little bit, that also helps. And again, you know, this isn't to give anybody necessarily an unfair advantage.

Sometimes that's the result. But really it's just to extract the answers that I know. If they had 24 hours to think about that, they would say. And if you've ever been in a position where you think back and regret and think about what you could have said or would've said, as we all do every day interviewing or not, you know, we really want, I really want candidates to.

Get, or to be honest, you know, get or not get a job based on their real experience and knowledge, not based on their interaction or their nerves or any of those things. So, mm-hmm. , I never tell people what to say. I never put words in people's mouths, but, you know, I just ask common questions or questions that I would ask if I was still in operations. And we kind of practice that a little bit. And it goes from the beginning of the interview to the.

You know, people don't even realize at the beginning of an interview if somebody says, How's your day going? Or How is your commute here? You know, if you start off negatives and say, Well, you know, I'm having a rough day, or The commute was rough. These are all reports of the interview. So, you know, not necessarily needs to be fake, but I'm having a great day. The commute was great because if it was rough to get here for an interview, how am I gonna get to work every single day?

Anyway, I think you get the point right through the end of the interview. The interviewer asks if they have any questions. I commonly see people you know, either get an anxious or maybe they haven't thought through, and they say, No, I think you've answered all the questions. It's not possible. They can't read your mind and you haven't asked any questions. So I always give people at least three or four ideas of some. Typically good questions that I would want to know.

And then at the very least, that hopefully either gives them some material, but more often than that actually sparks other ideas that they can have. So, and then I even offer to the end some tips on salary negotiation. Again, it's been so one sided for the employer that. You know, there's, there's some culture and even some legislation catching up for pay trans transparency.

But I still think that there's six techniques that you can learn and be skilled at and be confident at, so that you're not just getting a number that makes sense to the employer that you're actually getting paid for, you know, what the market value for that position and your experience are.

Plus the fact that some of the labor shortages that are happening right now are definitely making it more of an employee market. You know, an employee driven market. It's, you know, if you're a job searcher, you're in the driver's seat to a degree, at least it seems. So, are you finding that people are coming to you more to say, How do I pick the right employer as opposed to the employer picking the right candidate?

You know, I was talking to a guy the other day who had an applicant that had gone to seven interviews that day. He had six offers in front of him and was basically gonna say, who's got the best offer, kind of thing. Right. Are you finding that people are asking for advice on how to negotiate that type of stuff?

There's some HR roles and maybe marketing, but you know, day to day operations is not necessarily the case. There are some great groups out there one that I used to work with called Need, Hospitality and Design that is really trying to figure that out even on a, a management level and they're offering.

It's a beta program, so I don't think they have IT nation companywide yet, but they have a program where their managers can work at least their fifth day from home during their admin because we always, you know, we used to either try and work it in between lunch and dinner, right? Or go in early or stay late. But you know, if you're smart and you figure about 20% of your time as that meant anyway, you just bank it all and do it all in one day.

So whatever that looks like, coding, invoices, doing schedules, whatever it may be, and they're do also doing some other great work. I get a, a handful of people that are looking to change industry and on the surface that, that does sound great, but I generally have to walk them through what that really looks like. You know, are you willing to start over? It's a really humble place to come from. You might have to go down a couple. You know, ban bans in salary.

And for those that are willing to, it's a hundred percent my pleasure to help them do so. But it's, you know, when you talk through all that and, and benefits and things that come along with tenure, I would say a good, you know, 60, 60, 70% of the time we just go back to getting something. Not necessarily in their comfort zone, but something that, you know, will continue their career or, you know, yeah.

You know, maybe a little bit of a deviation, but it's really hard to go from a totally different industry, I think. Right.

And if those keywords aren't present, then it automatically kicks you out. And so I'm curious to know if you have any advice for the folks who are maybe polishing up their resume. Right. Like the best way to avoid being, you know, thrown out a pile even before they get a chance to take part in an interview. Yeah.

And then, you know, there's disparity, whether it be ageism, right. People that put. Whatever their experience years or even their high school graduation or grad college graduation date on there, we're recommending against to avoid that. So the computer doesn't discriminate, but it does have strict parameters. The advice that, that I have to give is one, while there's plenty of new ways to design a resume newer than you know, where mm-hmm.

accustomed to the, you know, the old templates keep it relatively simple because if you. Put a lot of pictures or if you design it and then import as graphics, those aren't being read. So it is skipping that whole portion of the resume. Right? Right. So if you put in the top left colors and you put in, you know, your competencies generally that, that box of, of, of picture not text, is not written, not read at all two you have to have clearly defined sections. So you know, you wanna.

Work experience. Literally the words work experience, cuz work and experience get picked up by the ets, Education gets picked up by the ets.

So for, and I listen, I, I understand and I implore people to, to wanna express themselves and this is the type of expression, but if, if we're doing something that we think is very modern and we're calling work experience something else, I don't, I don't even know, you know, life or whatever you, what I've seen on millions of resumes, computer doesn't understand that and. It's not programed to pick that up. So it's, it's skipping over that.

So if you have something random or you don't even put experience in there, it just sees dates and positions and it's probably not giving you credit because it, it takes all that information and then exports it into a different type of file. So you know, you're not getting the work experience that you think you're getting. And then lastly you know, I really want to implore people to avoid redundancy because if you put the word inventory and your resume.

More than 3, 4, 5 times, you're losing the ability to get credit or tracked for other, other types of work. Right. So, you know, I'm not saying, I guess my point is to either use different synonyms for, you know, similar roles or, you know, it's, it's a little bit redundant even to the human eye to read you. Inventory, blah, blah, blah, at job one and the inventory, blah, blah, blah. Same exact thing, job two, and then inventory, blah, blah, blah. Same exact thing, job three.

So maybe you put, you know, inventory tracking in, in the first job, and then the second one variance exploration or something like that. And then the third one, you put, you know, value whatever value estimation, something along those lines. So you're mm-hmm. , you're, you're giving the computer the, the opportunity to, you know, to recognize different skill sets that you.

So the experience and, and some of it is just obvious, you know, the city that you live in mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. , the jobs that you've had, the experience, the education, and then it filters these into the, the output for the, for the client. And this could be either a rating system, you know, of one to a hundred of how likely they are to be successful at this job. And I, I, it's evolving every day. I'm even seeing.

Applicant tracking systems that tell an employer how likely this person is to leave their job. And you know, the, that go into that are another level that you're thinking. And that's based on the years they've had in the industry, but also the years, the time that they've had at their current job. And I guess there's a philosophy that people are staying X amount of time at a job, so 37 months later, they're more, whatever.

I'm not saying 37 X amount of months later, they're more likely to leave than if they're still in the honeymoon phase of their new.

They're starting off with their posts, you know, just kind of the way that always has. I saw one the other day that the first line above the fold was for an executive chef, must, must maintain a clean uniform. Right. . So, so you get an opportunity to coach your applicants. Do you also get an opportunity to coach your client, your, your company clients, insofar as what are the things that they can be doing to better attract the right talent?

Take that critic, that constructive help and put it into place. I will say that I think my success is. do in part, to putting a, a, a spin on, oh, an already existing ad and then repurposing it and placing my own ad to make it, to make it enticing. And I think that's where I get a lot of my applicants and candidates. And it's also, you know, sometimes you have a company that the, the ship is a little too big to steer, so you.

Not that I have, you know, some of my previous employers as as clients like Starbucks and whether they would or wouldn't, and they do a great job on culture. So I'm not really using them as an example, but you know, you try and steer that ship and tell them how they should place their. It's, you know, it's not likely to go anywhere, and if it does, it's gotta go too far up the chain. So but I think you're absolutely right.

I think that motivations have shifted and workers are re really rethinking where they wanna work. I think that a good ad starts with a little bit of history about the company. I think that adding things like mission and values and culture are, are really important to today's workforce. I think that it's been. Not necessarily any longer just about career advancement opportunities and or wages and or benefits, which all help.

But whereas those used to be differentiators, now they're almost like tickets to entry. And that that's really just what should be getting you candidates in the first place. Yeah.

So you'd be surprised how far things like, you know, mental health and appreciation go. You know, a lot of these bigger companies are investing in you know, tools company wide, whether that be meditation and or wellness apps. A lot of companies are paying or offering gym memberships.

. And then I think on the job, you know, continued education and learning and development is really important because it shows the investment and it gives the candidate the opportunity to, to, you know, to have a long term career with that company. And you know, it, it's obviously additional investment. And every once in a while I see candidates that say, Hey, rather than investing, you know, 20 grand in wisetail or learning development program, why don't you just pay everybody a little more?

And again, that's, that's really you know, that's the, the paradox. That's, that's the, you know, it's, it's, it's the fine line to walk, you know? But I think that there's some really great programs out there. Jim, you know, you've told Adam and I about Clients that you have that are you know, offering home clean services and or, you know, laundry services.

Yeah. I think that, you know, no idea is a bad idea and clients are getting more and more creative in their offerings and candidates are getting more and more creative in their

There was, there's a, actually a restaurant group in Vancouver where I live that is buying, if you, if you get hired on as a manager, they buy you a. . Wow. If you don't own one so that you can have flexibility on your time off to, you know, go and explore and do things. And I was talking to one of the guys, he goes, Yeah, you'll never believe it. On my first day they gave me a laptop and a the keys to my new truck and they basically calculated it.

It was, you know, pay $5 more an hour or $10 more an hour, or, you know, lease a vehicle for somebody. You know, that kind of thing. But it's, yeah, just outside the box stuff. It's cool to see what's going on.

You know, stating that and having that be abundantly apparent and available so that people can have an idea of the type of company that they're getting involved in. And then possibly, you know, I'm trying not to rank these, but possibly the biggest impact would be to consider how these clients can reduce the interview timeline or steps to hire good candidates are being hired. Quickly and a, you know, a long drawn out process only exacerbates that.

And when they get another interview process that's quicker and a quicker offer, they are, you know, they're, they're signing up and, and kudos to them for doing so. So, Take advantage of technology, maybe have the first interview, you know, like this you know, maybe have a second interview right away, or, or in person, you know, if, if necessary, and if possible.

And then three you know, again, I know that we're all busy and things are, make it tough, but maybe have a a, a work it into one's calendar, you know? A certain time of day, every day, the week. That's just your interview time. Mm-hmm. , because when these things are getting pushed, we're losing strong candidates.

For me, I'm, I'm open, so I think finding on LinkedIn makes it easiest for the person that's. Thank

you know, that's, that's really interesting and, and I agree with you the speed of the interview process, I. I remember when I was still in operation, sometimes it took us like three weeks to hire somebody and it just surprised they still talk to us at the, you know, through that process. So yeah. I think you've got some great insight. So thanks again Chris.